¡Vamos, vamos Argentina!

Thursday was crazy-wonderful and completely filled with awesome cultural experiences! The excitement had already started before I even left my house for the university; for those of you who don’t know, Argentina played their second World Cup game against South Korea at 8:30am. I have to say, when it comes to being sports fans Argentineans beat Americans hands down! I have never seen anything like yesterday morning; the entire town shut down for the game! When I left the apartment at 8:30 (Zulema had had the pregame show on since before I woke up) the city was completely dead. Whereas usually when I leave in the mornings the streets are full with cars and the sidewalks are full of people, yesterday the streets and sidewalks resembled a ghost town. When the bus pulled up and I walked on I was once again surprised; I usually fight for standing room, but yesterday I had to decide between at least 15 open seats. I had heard rumors of how things were for the games, but to actually witness and experience it was amazing! I was noting how strange campus was since it was so empty (all of the Argentinean students’ classes had been cancelled) when I walked up to Casa Verde and heard from the direction of downtown a huge eruption of cheers, what sounded like fireworks or canons firing, and horns: Argentina had made a goal! When I got to my classroom upstairs we were all feeling a little sorry for ourselves since the city was shut down and near a state of celebration and we had a quiz and a test to take. However, Profe Miriam walked in, passed out our quizzes, and told us that when we finished we could go to a classroom downstairs and watch the rest of the game! It was really exciting to watch, and a few of us had dressed for the occasion in hats and jerseys and scarves (I was sporting my Messi jersey!) in order to show support for the team that we couldn’t help but adopt as our favorite while we’re here. I unfortunately didn’t get to focus solely on watching the game since I had to prepare for my written exam in my second class, so I am excited that the next game on Tuesday doesn’t start until I’m completely done for the day. Argentina won of course, and my walk home was extremely interesting as well. Córdoba was completely opposite from the last time I had seen it, and people were out and about all over the city to celebrate! I can safely say that 85% of the people, young and old alike, that I passed wore some sort of item in support of their team. Whether it was a jersey, a high school girl incorporating a scarf into her school uniform, or a flag worn as a cape, people found some way to display their support. I passed people with their faces painted, people blowing white and light blue horns in celebration, and others had even set up celebration barbecues randomly in the plazas and along the streets. I can try to explain it as best as I can, but it’s hard to grasp the feeling in the air until you experience it yourself. I was talking last night about how I would assume that American football is our country’s most popular sport, but at the same time I have never seen the level of support that I saw here yesterday! Once I got home I had a couple of hours to work on homework a little bit before leaving for our second tango class. We had had to skip it last week since we were leaving for Salta, but we picked it back up yesterday and have one more class left next week. It was once again really fun, and I’m still very proud of all of the boys for being so invested in learning! We went over the steps that we learned last time and then learned a few new ones, and by the end of the class we were all dancing in circles around the room as the second group showed up. After it was over I walked to Plaza San Martín and met Vicky in front of the cathedral. We had been talking since our first meeting about going to a theater production together, and at the end of our meeting on Wednesday we decided that we didn’t want to wait a whole week to see each other again and it was about time we stopped putting it off! However, I keep leaving her on the weekends so Thursday was our only option. She looked up shows and times and there was only one showing on Thursday, but we decided to just go because we didn’t really care what we saw, we just thought it sounded like fun! The theater that we went to is located on the perimeter of the plaza, and we got there an hour early to get a good spot in line. One of Vicky’s friends from high school who also has taken English courses, Eugenia (pronounced eh-oo-hen-ee-a), met up with us and she was a lot of fun! She was really cute and full of energy, and although the three of us had to wait in line for an hour the time passed quickly because we visited the whole time. We talked about the game that morning, Vicky and Eugenia caught up on life (Eugenia is an architecture major, so they don’t get to see each other as often as they’d like), and they taught me various words and phrases in Spanish related to theater. We were the first ones in line, so when the doors opened we were able to claim front row seats. We knew that the play was put on by a traveling Italian theater company, and while we were waiting for it to start Vicky and Eugenia were reading the program and found out that the whole play was going to be in Italian with a Spanish translation in the background. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a more cultural experience; I got to see and read a play in two languages different from my native one! The play was called “Dissonorata,” and was about a woman and her struggles throughout the earlier part of her life during the years around World War II. The production was very interesting, and only had two men: one played instruments for background music and the other was dressed as an elderly woman and sat in the middle of the stage and recalled moments earlier in “her” life. Since there wasn’t really action and I was going to have to speed-read in Spanish I was a little worried that I wouldn’t understand any of it. However, when it finished I was very proud of myself. I definitely didn’t catch every single word and some of what happened was a little fuzzy, but I totally understood the majority of what happened and was able to follow the entire storyline! Also it was fun because I recognized two of the words that Vicky and Ángel had taught me at lunch the day before. I know this is something that I never would have been able to do before I arrived to Córdoba, and since I sometimes feel like my Spanish is still horrible it’s good to have some things that help me realize that, even though I still have a long ways to go, I am improving. The play ended around 11:00 and Vicky’s boyfriend, Carlos, picked us up and drove me home. He was very nice and after hearing so much about him it was fun to finally get to meet him! I had had a great day and a wonderful evening, and even though I was super tired when I finally got home last night I was so thankful for everything that I got to take part in yesterday.